> I went to a GTAC (Google testing conference) where a presentation made a very good argument--with numbers and everything--that for smaller projects with simple and more or less static UIs, and where the tests were all fundamentally scripted, there was almost no advantage to coding the tests later. Record-replay was the best way to go.

I agree with you. Most people here discuss recording vs not recording. I think most people really lack a basic understanding of testing. A tool is still a tool.

In my point of view most websites aka apps can be treated like that and maybe should. Usually there needs to be a testing strategy in place. Why and what are you testing? What do you wanna confirm, what kind of bugs are you looking for, what is your testing strategy? How much time and effort go into test?

We found out (finance), that one essential ingredient was missing in our tests: the happy path. Without a single test for the end to end happy path, testing for anything else becomes useless.

And the happy path can and maybe should in most cases be tested using a recorder, because it comes closer to what a real person does.